How Climate Change Is Set to Bend the Global Economy

• In Event: 508 - Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables (one-hour). Table 01. Environmental Crises and Resilience

Abstract

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its fifth assessment report, has concluded with 95% of certitude that climate change is credibly sourced to anthropogenic emissions of carbon. It went out of the way to budget these emissions to half a trillion tons by 2100, to keep global mean warming under 2 degree Celsius. Opposed to these prescriptions, however, fossil capital subverted the 2C goal, as well as the prospects of a binding climate pact this year, at climate talks in Lima, Peru, by introducing the “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.” Even INDCs are now being dodged as nation-states, the pivot of modern capitalism, are waiting each other out to see who “intends” “how much.” Impatient with these antics, environmentalists argue that climate imperative dictates to achieve zero-emissions by 2040 to keep global mean warming under 2C. Even world temperature at 1.5 degree Celsius will endanger the survival of the world’s 46 island nations, the largest portion of which is located in the Pacific region. Eighty percent of the world’s population lives within 200 miles of the coastline, which, according to IPCC, is vulnerable to typhoons such as Haiyan that wrecked the Philippines in 2013. The fossil-fueled global economy has thus created the planetary climate crisis, which befits James O’Conner’s description of the “second contradiction of capitalism.” This paper empirically demonstrates this contradiction by documenting the impact of climate change on South Asia, home to 1.7 billion people, and 18,000 Himalayan glaciers that are dreaded to melt away.

Author

• Tarique Niazi, University of Wisconsin